The Dirty Streets of Heaven (Bobby Dollar, #1)
Tad Williams
Bobby Dollar is an angel -- a real one. He knows a lot about sin, and not just in his professional capacity as an advocate for souls caught between Heaven and Hell. Bobby's wrestling with a few deadly sins of his own -- pride, anger, even lust. But his problems aren't all his fault. Bobby can't entirely trust his heavenly superiors, and he's not too sure about any of his fellow earthbound angels either, especially the new kid that Heaven has dropped into their midst, a trainee angel who asks too many questions. And he sure as hell doesn't trust the achingly gorgeous Countess of Cold Hands, a mysterious she-demon who seems to be the only one willing to tell him the truth. When the souls of the recently departed start disappearing, catching both Heaven and Hell by surprise, things get bad very quickly for Bobby D. "End-of-the-world" bad. "Beast of Revelations" bad. Caught between the angry forces of Hell, the dangerous strategies of his own side, and a monstrous undead avenger that wants to rip his head off and suck out his soul, Bobby's going to need all the friends he can get--in Heaven, on Earth, or anywhere else he can find them. You've never met an angel like Bobby Dollar. And you've never read anything like The Dirty Streets of Heaven. Brace yourself -- the afterlife is weirder than you ever believed.
Publication Year: 2013
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Sam Spade with a tarnished halo, the dame who walks into Bobby Dollar's life has a hint of brimstone to go along with her perfume. Though Bobby's day to day angelic duties are more Law and Order than P. I. work, when a soul turns up missing he is forced to start investigating things on his own.
It took me a chapter or so to get used to Bobby's noire point of view, but I was hooked once the focus moved from how the immediately-after-life works to pounding the pavement in search of answers.
Angels are a tricky business, and while the character dynamic of THE DIRTY STREETS OF HEAVEN won me over and had me laughing out loud, the afterlife machinations that had Bobby Dollar on the run never really made sense to me. Heaven erases angels' earthly memories, Hell does not, and it's not really clear to me which practice is being shown as "bad". Williams writes convincingly of angels as "human" workers, advocating to win souls without nit picking on moral matters, but it's still unclear how these flawed foot soldiers fit in to the greater celestial picture. If Bobby's fleshy body and work in the trenches makes him so relatable, I suppose it makes sense that Heaven, which Bobby himself has a hard time remembering, remains amorphous and mysterious. The unfortunate side effect is that the higher angels that reside in Heaven, and that are supposed to add half piece of the urgent plot driving Bobby, never emerge as effective characters.
Full review to follow.
Sexual Content: Sex scenes.
0Now, I'm not saying I didn't have a good time. But I am saying this book took me forever to read because I needed so many breaks.
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